Late last week at the Queens Park Rangers’ fan forum on Thursday evening, Director of Football Les Ferdinand reportedly revealed that he’d turned down the opportunity to be interviewed for the Football Association’s Technical Director role – that isn’t quite true.
The 51-year-old former club favourite had been shortlisted by the FA for the position that will be vacated by Dan Ashworth in the near future and the initial news of his shortlisting received a mixed response from fans given the perceived successes/failures he’s had in his role for us in recent season’s.
For those who feel Ferdinand has somewhat had a rough ride of things given general dissatisfaction at the club and our recent struggles, they will have been pleased with his response and his commitment to the club.
Sky Sports quote him as saying.
“I spoke to them but it wasn’t time for me to leave this football club, I am happy to stay. I did speak to the FA and I made my views clear to them. I was flattered they wanted to speak to me because sometimes you read reports and they make you feel like you’re not doing a good job. But they’ve recognised what we’ve done at this football club.”
Chief executive Lee Hoos spoke of the FA’s interest as being a compliment and proof that QPR are trying to do things in the right way and whilst there will always be grumbles, I guess that’s exactly how it should be viewed.
Whilst Ferdinand’s role will always see him take the flak, along with the manager, during periods of struggles, it’s only fair they both take the praise when there is improvement and we’ve certainly seen that in recent months.
Ferdinand has now dismissed these reports, and re-clarified that he was interviewed but the FA felt he wasn’t the right candidate for the role at this particular time.
“I went and I did an interview for the position – I’m glad I went for the interview and went through the process – but at this moment in time they didn’t think I was the right person for the role. I was at a fans’ forum the other day and somebody asked me if I was leaving the club and I said no. Somewhere along the way it has been misconstrued that I didn’t interview, that I turned the interview down. No, I spoke to Dan Ashworth and Martin Glenn and we had a conversation but they deemed I probably wasn’t the right person for the role at this moment in time.”
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In fairness, he was encouraged by the club to talk but he didn’t jump at the interview initially, handling it the right way and going via QPR. He stated he would be interested in a similar role in the future, but he still feels ‘there’s a lot of work for me here to do’.
Just a subtle loss in translation as I guess the ‘talk’ was misconstrued as non interview chat, rather than what happened.
